


being seen

by rustedspire



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Backstory, Bisexual Keith (Voltron), F/F, Gender Dysphoria, Meta, Trans Character, Trans Female Keith (Voltron), Trans Female Pidge | Katie Holt, Trans Keith (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 04:10:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15655488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rustedspire/pseuds/rustedspire
Summary: "maybe part of being seen is remembering you aren't hard to look at." an essay-turned-fic on my thoughts on keith.





	being seen

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted [on tumblr.](http://thearkoftaujeer.tumblr.com/post/171889434835/so-a-long-headcanon-post-i-think-of-keith-as-a) please feel free to talk with me there! this was written after season 5, and i haven't edited the few backstory details that were jossed by season 7, but i might in the future.
> 
> this work is tagged 'meta' because of how it's woven into the canon timeline and links to other straightforward character/ship meta posts i've made for reference, and because i would prefer the writing quality to be judged as a simple headcanon post and not a fully realized fic. i'm not insisting that this is the truest most canon interpretation. i don't believe that keith is genuinely queercoded in any sense, but i also don't object to people popularly considering him gay; i'm just a bisexual trans person who heavily relates to keith. thanks for reading.

so,

  * i think of keith as a bisexual trans girl. 
  * she thought she was a gay man from a pretty young age (9-12?) from having crushes on boys– not super recognizable as ‘crushes’ at first, but getting stuck on a ‘favorite friend’, being slightly clingy; feeling a sense of wonder toward other boys, like they’re interesting but don’t make sense, in a way she thought was similar to how straight men talk about women being ‘mysterious’, ‘from venus’, so she assumed that the confusion was solely a part of being gay.
  * friendships with girls are easier. only awkward when other people make it awkward. they’re not ‘mysterious’ at all because they talk about things, and even if keith doesn’t talk that much, she likes listening. she likes feeling like a natural part of a group of girls, until someone comments on her being ‘the only boy’ or the girls expect her to think very differently from them. keith only knows how she thinks and feels, and some of how girls think and feel because they explain it to each other, and it feels like keith is different from most people so it must just be because of being weird or gay or both. she didn’t like the idea of girls being attracted to her and didn’t like watching friends of hers start het dating each other, so. gay, right?
  * realizing she’s trans is a slow and vague and hard process. it feels like she fundamentally doesn’t ‘fit in’ with any of the groups she’s supposed to and it’s impossible to tell how much of it is the abandonment issues thing vs being Weird in a personality way vs… no other options exist. she just feels a nameless anxiety running underneath everything and blames it on her boo-hoo orphan problems and high school being hard.
  * it feels like she doesn’t know how to befriend them anymore, but going to the garrison and meeting girls who are programmers and engineers and look tired all the time, there’s this feeling– it’s not like they’re Not Like Other Girls because keith has always known that women are people and even ‘other girls’ have depth, but they’re uniquely fascinating to her, and when the guys around her express attraction to certain kinds of stubborn and unstylish girls, in ways that don’t seek to change them, it’s… comforting, to hear. 
  * (it’s _appealing._ somehow she really wants guys to be attracted to her the same way they’re attracted to those girls, even though that doesn’t make sense, and guys who like guys… like guys, and she’s not fem or campy in general. but it’s hard to shake the feeling. she worries, then defensively proclaims, that it’s just a kink or something, and plenty of guys have it.)
  * (if she _was_ a girl, keith thinks, she would already be one. she would’ve known when she was four, or at least twelve. she’s 17 now.) 
  * there’s a constant sour jealousy in her stomach that everyone else seems to know what they are and what to do and all keith is good at is flying and feeling like an invisible audience to others’ conversations, a plant consuming all the excess light that comes off the way other people talk to and about each other. shiro helps her feel more seen, but there’s still something he doesn’t _get._
  * being out of school and alone and losing her mind slightly out in that shack is hard, of course, but it’s almost nice to not be around people. it lifts the weird constant out-of-place feeling a bit, to be literally out of place and alone. 
  * her hair gets long and it kind of feels good that no one expects her to keep it short but mainly the ‘good’ thing is she doesn’t have to look at her face as much and she’s not even sure _why_  she doesn’t want to look at herself because she’s not ugly but. but. the hair stays.
  * the anxious jealous feeling comes back with a vengeance when she meets pidge: more proof that girls know by 12, that keith picked the wrong path and her weird girl fantasies are _weird_.
  * but even though it sucks that it hurts, realizing that it _hurts_  makes it impossible to ignore. it’s not normal to want to be seen as a girl. “it’s not _ab_ normal,” shiro tells her– talking directly to pidge is too scary right now– “it isn’t wrong. but i don’t think it’s, well, cis.”
  * she thinks about girls again, when there’s time to reflect, when she can’t sleep. the ones that made her feel– _jealous_  seems like the wrong word, like it’s mean, but. she did wish she could be in their place. girls who are girls without ‘trying’, girls with ‘male’ interests, just the… fundamental part of it that is unchanged by how a girl looks or acts or what or who she likes. the way they all could see it in pidge and it wasn’t because of anything physical. 
  * that’s what she wants to have– to not have to change anything or inconvenience anyone, to have them just know automatically that maybe she isn’t a guy, that that’s the assumption that always made her feel walled off from other people. 
  * (but she also got used to not being seen. it’s safe there.)
  * she feels a little like allura sees her. some of it is in how oddly comfortable she feels with allura, even as it eats at her that allura is an _alien_  and still gets to be and look like a girl. she doesn’t know what allura thinks about human gender, what ‘male’ means to her, and thinks maybe not knowing helps with that easy feeling. but it’s also because allura is like the girls she befriended on earth, and because they think similarly on a strategic level, and… something else.
  * allura says, _[“well, what about you?”](http://thequartermoonmurders.tumblr.com/post/163800268677/keith)_ and it makes keith realize she hasn’t thought _what about me_  in a rational or kind tone, only jealous, in… years. 
  * (why is it scary to think other people might look right at you and not hate you? because they must just not know exactly what you are.)
  * so it’s terrifying when allura looks at her, knowing what she is. and then won’t look at her, because of what she is. it’s a different ‘what’, that time, but it shows again: you can’t ignore what you want when not having it hurts this bad.
  * she feels seen, again, thankfully, when allura comes back around. and hugs her. and it hurts like hugs always have, but she doesn’t withdraw as much as she normally would. maybe part of being seen is remembering you aren’t hard to look at.
  * keith gets used to thinking the phrase _not cis_  about herself, even if she doesn’t say it out loud, and the vagueness makes it a little easier to breathe, keeps her from beating herself up about not knowing sooner, worrying as much about what to Do about it– what does it even mean to ‘do something about it’? will she suddenly be fine once her hair hits a certain length? do real girls ever think that way?
  * maybe it comes back to that wish that she could just _be_ a girl without _becoming_ a girl. be in the group without anyone interrupting to single her out.
  * one day she just blurts out to pidge, “do you like having short hair?” and something in her expression gets across that she’s not trying to be rude. pidge thinks for a bit. “it’s just hair. i didn’t like why i had to cut it, but it’s still just mine.” 
  * it’s what keith wanted to hear, and also isn’t. like it might mean _real girls don’t have to do anything_  but pidge probably meant _it’s up to you_  and she’s scared to make that choice. it’s easier to keep avoiding it, just in case. that had been her strategy in general: reject yourself before someone else can reject you. run away before you can be left.
  * but:  _["come back to us."](http://thearkoftaujeer.tumblr.com/post/171854578335/yknow-keith-doesnt-need-to-be-involved-in-these)_
  * so she finally starts thinking, maybe girls see more of her than she’d thought. maybe she isn’t hard for allura to look at.
  * (that first rejection of relationships with girls– it was because being looked at as a girl’s _boyfriend_  felt scary, even back then, and she had been nervous but happy about imagining being boys’  _girlfriend_ , so–)
  * (well, “straight girl” was the most confusing potential label out of all the scary words she’d considered. throwing that one out is a relief. dismissing _straight_  breaks a dam in her brain, erases a lot of baggage she hadn’t wanted to accumulate, and the  _girl_  part feels so much less unattainable now–)
  * so, eventually:
  * keith says “i want to tell you all something,” and pidge catches her eye, and just nods, and that makes the rest easy to say.
  * she cuts her hair short, because it’s convenient, and she can understand her own face again.
  * allura says “it suits you,” and it does, and the warmth in her chest is familiar and unobstructed, now. 
  * she thinks, _allura is my favorite friend_ , and thinks of the high school boyfriends who were nicest about the girl thing, and reminds herself it’s okay to accept these things. 
  * she doesn’t have to run away, from anything or anyone, to be good.




End file.
